1077: New Year’s Honours

I know it’s December 30, but I’m out for New Year’s Eve tomorrow night (just at a friend’s house — I don’t really do obnoxiously loud, drunken parties any more) and probably won’t feel particularly inclined to write a lot tomorrow evening. So I thought I’d look back on the year that was, as is traditional for regular bloggers to do around this time of year.

Actually, looking back, I didn’t really do that at this time last year. Instead I apparently wrote a bit about the board game Pandemic, The Old Republic (was it really a year ago I was playing that and actually enjoying it before the move to suffocating free-to-play pretty much removed everyone’s desire to ever play it ever again?), Minecraft and insomnia. (The above subjects may be somewhat related.) This leads me to believe that the year that was in that instance (being 2011) was not something especially worth looking back on.

And is this year? As I’ve been writing these first few paragraphs, I’ve been pausing occasionally to consider this question. Was 2012 in any way notable or interesting? It certainly wasn’t a “bad” year as such — no, 2010 had that pretty much covered and thankfully I haven’t had a year that bad since — but neither was it a particularly exciting year. I guess that’s sort of good, though — if the most you can say about a year as it is ending is that it just sort of passed by relatively without incident, then I suppose that’s a good thing.

There were good things, of course. The fact that I’m sitting in a flat/apartment/whateverthefuckyouwanttocallit in Southampton — a place I’ve been trying to get back to ever since 2010 went and fucked everything up — is testament to the fact that Things Are Going Sort of All Right, Really, and I’ll certainly take Things Are Going Sort of All Right, Really over Things Are Going Really Fucking Terribly and I Just Want to Cry All Day and All Night. I’ve done both, and I don’t recommend the latter.

But yes. The move back “home” to Southampton is a big positive step. I am now within walking, biking or short driving distance from the vast majority of my friends that I would like to see much more often, which makes me feel good. Okay, none of them have come to visit me yet, but I think I can excuse that, what with it being a rather busy and chaotic time of year and all. Also, delaying their arrival a little increases the chances that we will have got rid of the hundreds and thousands of massive cardboard boxes that are seemingly breeding in this place as we unpack stuff and assemble new pieces of furniture. (We now own a new wardrobe. It’s a bit bigger than we initially thought, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing, as the rooms in this place are pleasingly large.)

What else happened in the last year? I did jury service for the first (and hopefully last) time, in which I got to see how the court system worked for a relatively major case which had to be subsequently abandoned and restarted at some indefinite point in the future. It was an interesting experience, though I would have enjoyed it more if I had a regular job in this country I could just easily take time off from, was not suffering with some sort of hideous plague and was not in the process of moving house (and consequently spending several nights sleeping on the floor of a house with no furniture in it). As I predicted it might do, jury service prompted an immediate re-examination of my life and consideration of whether or not law would be Something Interesting to Look Into.

Regarding Something Interesting to Look Into: this is an occasional crisis of confidence I have at various points in my life where I wonder whether or not I’m on the “right” path career-wise. I’ve been back and forth over a few careers, after all — classroom teacher, private music teacher (though that was never enough to support myself on), retail store employee, software trainer, regular contributor on a mainstream video games site, regular contributor on a specialist social/mobile games site — and frequently find myself pondering what next steps might be. Where do I go? Do I want to go there? Should I stay doing what I’m doing — which is comfortable, fun, relatively challenging and something that I’m good at — or should I do some sort of complete (early) mid-life crisis turnaround, retrain as something that I’m not currently and make a career out of that? I honestly don’t know. But now’s not really the time to be thinking about that.

It’s funny. When I titled this post “New Years Honours” I anticipated that I was going to be able to make a list of Specific Happenings in 2012 that were particularly noteworthy, but this has turned into something of a ramble, really. I apologise. Still, it’s something to think about.

All right, let’s make a list of a few things just to round things out.

Best Video Games I Played: School Days HQ, Katawa Shoujo, Trails in the Sky, Pandora’s Tower, Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed, The Walking Dead

Best Wee I Did: Friday morning this week, it was well over a minute long.

Favourite Technology Purchase: My Novatech laptop, which runs everything from visual novels to TrackMania 2 in relatively portable form without a hitch.

Most Pleasing Restaurant Chain Discovery: Yo! Sushi — I don’t care how authentic it is/isn’t, it’s delicious.

Medium I Abandoned Completely and Don’t Feel Any Regrets About: Movies.

Medium I Embraced Wholeheartedly and Don’t Feel Any Regrets About: Anime. Also visual novels.

Amount I Earned by Emptying my Small Change into the Coinstar Machine in Sainsburys: About £80

Amount I Earned by Music Magpie-ing Almost my Entire CD Collection (Except for the Stuff They Wouldn’t Take Like Spice Girls and Other Stuff That Escapes Me Right Now): About £80

Amount I Anticipate I Will Probably Get for Selling My Knackered Old Car Next Year: About £80

Most Expensive Purchase: New sofa

Most Expensive Purchase That is Probably Impossible to Get Into Our New Flat: New sofa

Meme I’m Most Sick Of: Grumpy Cat

Number of People I’ve Blocked on Twitter for Arguing Too Aggressively or Unreasonably (Not Necessarily Towards Me): Too many to count

Number of Completely Unnecessary Mobile Social Networking Apps I Have Encountered in the Course of my Job This Year: Too many to count

What I Can Smell Right Now: Smoked mackerel

What I am Going to Do After This Blog Post: Make a warm milk, go to bed, play Trails in the Sky.

Why I am Still Thinking of Things to Put in This List When I’ve Clearly Run Out of Ideas: I don’t know.

Good night.